Greetings all. After studying this lifestyle and making arrangements to prepare for it we have made the plunge! We purchased our fine ship in March of this year and left the dock in early September. We have enjoyed meeting some very interesting and helpful folks so far and can't wait to see what each day brings! This site has helped us in so many ways even prior to our purchase so now it is time to help others and hopefully meet some of the fine people we have been listening to!
Thank you so much!

Welcome aboard!
So tell us about your "fine ship".
We like to talk boats here and would luv to here about yours!
Have you taken'r to any place special?

__________________Faithful are the Wounds of a Friend, but the Kisses of the Enemy are Deceitful! ........
A nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves!
Unprepared boaters, end up as floatsum!.......

Ah yes, the joys of "taking the plunge"...gotta love it, this living the dream. So far this week...lol...changed out the pooched fresh water system pump...and then, the forward head pump needed a rebuild, was "pissing and puking" past the diaphragm.....yes, this IS what dreams are made of<grin>Inverter installations, climbing the 65 foot mast up to the second set of spreaders to install the babystay, but we love it!

Being busy keeps me out of "trouble" so to speak, and increases my maintenance skills and tool inventory. They now know me by my first name at West Marine here in Pensacola, I know where the best deals are in town on bags of ice, the "good" restaurants, closest gas station for the car, and aw heck, the list just goes on and on.

Are we ready to fully depart the dock...well, not quite yet! Still some systems to learn, the washing machine works really well, especially when the discharge valves are open in the proper setting, bilge cleaner cleans the bilge of urine and other escaped odors from the head pump issue. Playing ping pong with the bowsprit down the dockage fairway has us considering a bow thruster(no damage to our bowsprit, dock poles, docks, multi-million dollar boats docked here) hell yeah, this is FUN! I love it!

So much better than sitting at home, maybe still employed at the old salt mine, working 70 to 80 hours a week, fighting traffic, cold weather, muggers.....

Thank you all for your replies, humor and encouragement !
We purchased a plate steel hull Bruce Robert design 42 ketch in Kentucky fresh water in March and moved onto her in June. As soon as we received our coast guard papers we left the dock and began a journey down the Tennessee and Tombigbee waterway. That was an adventure in itself! We learned many lessons in getting ungrounded, passing thru locks, meeting barges and speaking under bridges with inches to spare yikes!
When reached mobile bay during a severe thunderstorm and survived the ride to our anchorage we knew we could do this for sure! Almost lost the dinghy there but it held on by a thread. We then found water in the engineoil and spent time taking care of that "inconvenience "
Always looking forward to each day! Our weather has been beautiful and the folks we meet along the way are awesome! We are currently in the Pensacola area and will be pulling her out to take care of the bottom. Would love to make more friends here and get her back in the water ASAP to continue this fabulous experience